


hiding a mess doesn't make it clean

by Kacka



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anxiety, Depression, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-13
Updated: 2016-10-13
Packaged: 2018-08-22 04:03:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8272066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kacka/pseuds/Kacka
Summary: Clarke might be able to hide the mess she is as a person, but when her depression gets so bad she can't keep her house clean, she decides to hire someone to help her out. Luckily, Raven has a friend who is willing to get his hands dirty if it makes him a little cash.





	

**Me:** u left ur shoes last night  & I would just like to say: how?

**Raven:** *wine glass emoji* *ghost emoji* *dead emoji*

**Me:** mmm yes it’s all coming back now  
well some of it is

**Raven:** i’d say keep them till next time but i need them for physical therapy tonite  
if i swing by after work will you be there

**Me:** no but u know where the spare key is

**Raven:** you must be joking  
i would never in a million years find them in that pit

**Me:** excuse u

**Raven:** srsly babe i lived w you for 3 years and it never got that bad  
you need to get your house in order

**Me:** i’ll leave the shoes by the front door  
would it be excessive to hire a cleaning service?

**Raven:** thx  
& idk but idc. i can’t take it anymore. if you can afford it, i’m behind you 100%  
actually my friend likes to do weird shit for money  
let me see if he’d be interested

**Me:** with a recommendation like that how can i say no

* * *

Clarke isn’t sure what to expect of Raven’s friend.

Other friends of Raven’s include an ex who cheated on her, a hippie vegan pacifist chick whom she met at her gym’s kickboxing classes, an engineer with questionable facial hair, and a guy whose signature fashion statement is goggles. And, of course, Clarke herself: the other woman dating the aforementioned cheating ex.

Clarke likes all of these people well enough, so she trusts Raven’s tastes, but she’d be lying if she wasn’t slightly curious about this guy. Especially since all she knows of him is that he’s willing to do ‘weird shit’ as long as he gets paid.

But Clarke has been having a rough time of it lately. Twelve-hour hospital shifts demand much of her waking hours, and she never feels like she can quite get enough rest on her time off. She spends more time in her bed than out of it these days, and if she isn’t wearing scrubs, she’s in her comfiest clothes.

Raven resorts to bribes and coercion to get quality Clarke time, but it’s been weeks since she’s seen her other friends. She doesn’t feel like doing things with them, and eventually they stopped asking.

She feels guilty every time she cuts her mom’s calls short. Abby assures her that she remembers what it was like to adjust to the lifestyle of a medical professional, but Clarke knows it’s more than that. Her mom always makes her more irritable than other people do, but it’s like she’s in a permanent state of annoyance and frustration.

Wells gets half-assed reaction gifs and emoji-laden responses, instead of actual words she has to string together. Anything more is too much work.It’s the most effort she can give.

So Clarke doesn’t feel like she can be blamed for letting her apartment get a little-- okay, a lot-- messy. To put it right again feels like an insurmountable task.

She does manage to hide her dirty laundry in her closet, to start soaking some of the dishes that have food crusting in them, to empty her bathroom trash before Raven’s friend arrives. It’s the most she can do, and it doesn’t feel like enough, all at once. 

She's been telling herself that as long as she can get through the hour, he’ll leave and she can go back to bed, but suddenly an hour seems like forever. Just as she’s panicking over whether this is a good idea or not, the knock on the door comes.

He’s surprisingly normal-looking. No goggles or mustaches or crazy voluminous hair in sight. He is stunningly attractive, but Clarke _has_ met Raven. She’s not entirely surprised that her friend would have legitimate just-rolled-out-of-bed hair and a wide, dimpled smile and an upper body that might have been sculpted by the gods themselves.

“You must be Clarke.”

“You must be the ‘does weird shit for money’ guy.”

His grin stretches even further. It’s the best smile Clarke has ever seen.

“I’ve been called worse, I guess. But you can use my name if you want.”

“Which is…”

“Oh. Bellamy.” He holds a hand out to shake and it’s comically larger than hers.

“Clarke.”

“We did that part already.”

“Right.” She shakes her head tiredly and laughs a little, stepping to the side. “Please, come on in.”

“Nice place.” Clarke snorts. “It is,” he insists. “Underneath the mess.”

“You can’t see it underneath the mess.”

“Well, it’s a nice building. I’m making an educated guess.” He looks around with a little more interest now that they’ve both acknowledged the state of the room. It’s only a little bit of a disaster zone. Actual sites of earthquakes and tornadoes look way worse than this. Probably.

She gets why it stresses Raven out; it stresses _Clarke_  out. It makes her feel guilty and sloppy, and the messier it gets, the larger the task of cleaning grows, the more anxious she feels. 

“You really don’t have to do this,” she tells Bellamy, shifting her weight from foot to foot as he pokes his head around the corner into the kitchen area. “I was just second-guessing myself when you got here.”

“I’m willing,” he shrugs. “As long as you pay me. I didn’t bring any supplies or anything; I figured I’d assess the situation and figure out what you had before I prematurely spent good money.”

“I’ve got tile and glass cleaner, I think?” She scrunches her nose in thought and picks her way to the kitchen so she can peer under the sink. “Yeah. And Clorox wipes. And I have a Swiffer, but no pads.”

“Got a vacuum?”

“Hall closet,” she says, pointing. He nods, but keeps looking around, like he’s trying to see everything. Like he might find Where’s Waldo popping out from behind some empty takeout container.

“Feel free to back out at any time,” she adds, biting her lip. Her words seem to bring him back to the moment and he smiles at her again, easy and warm.

“Haven’t scared me off yet.”

They set up a system where he’ll come every week (or every other week, if it seems like too much) and do whatever needs doing the most. He tells Clarke the salary she offers is too high, but she refuses to let him talk her down. It still feels wrong to let a veritable stranger clean up her mess, clean up her life.

“I don’t want to become one of our parents’ friends who alleviates their guilt by throwing money at their problems,” Clarke tells Wells when he finally gets her on the phone. To be fair, she’d been trying to have this conversation with Raven, who decided she wasn’t the right sounding board and tagged in the other member of what she deems the Silver Spoon club. She’s not entirely wrong. 

“We always hated those people.”

“But that’s not what you’re doing,” Wells reminds her. His voice is even and kind and she’s missed him so much. She can feel a lump forming in the back of her throat for absolutely no reason, and guzzles water to swallow it down.

“It’s not?” She asks when she comes up for air.

“No, Clarke. You aren’t giving your employee a bigger severance package so she’ll forget you sexually harassed her. You’re paying someone a fair wage-- or more than fair, if you believe this Bellamy guy-- to provide you a service. This is a business transaction.”

“I guess.” She curls up beneath a blanket on the couch. She isn’t cold; the weight is comforting.

“If it really weirds you out so much, you don’t have to keep him on. You could just clean your own place like a normal person.”

The thought raises an inexplicable panic within Clarke. For the first time in a long time, she can rest her feet on her coffee table. She can put things in the recycling bin because there’s room for them. She can open her refrigerator without fear of discovering mold and can go to the bathroom in the middle of the night without stubbing her toe. 

All these things that added to her worry and shame are suddenly gone, and she doesn’t know how to cope if it goes back to the way it was without Bellamy.

But Wells doesn’t know she can’t do it on her own. Doesn’t know that some days, it’s all she can do to remember to feed herself. And she doesn’t want him to know, doesn’t want to burden him when she knows precisely how heavy a weight it is.

So she brushes him off with an airy, “I’ve become accustomed to a certain lifestyle,” and changes the subject, content to listen to him ramble about his new boyfriend at length.

She has become the queen of deflection, really. Even if her friends and family think she’s a lazy slob, that’s better than them seeing her for who she is: broken. Incapable. Lacking in self-discipline and drowning in self-pity. Weak.

Bellamy comes the closest to seeing her for what she really is, if only because he’s around her more than anyone else, but she does a decent job of covering it up. For a while.

“Do you ever cook?” He asks one week, voice muffled by the fridge door.

Clarke is sitting awkwardly at the counter she never eats at because she still isn’t totally comfortable with this arrangement. At least if she’s pretending to work on her budget, she’ll be able to create the impression that she’s on top of some aspects of her life.

“I cook ramen,” she says, thinking carefully. “In the microwave. But those are single-servings, so no leftovers.”

He emerges with an arm full of plastic and styrofoam containers, dropping them in a heap on the counter with a look of mild disgust.

“Don’t get me wrong. I like pizza as much as the next person, but aren’t doctors supposed to promote healthy lifestyles?”

Without warning or any kind of buildup, Clarke promptly dissolves into tears.

“Oh.” His eyes grow wide. “Hey, no, it’s okay.”

Clarke tries to choke the sobs down, but they only intensify as he rounds the counter and places a tentative hand on her back.

“I don’t know why I’m crying,” she gasps. She has never sounded more like a frog, has never been more embarrassed or unable to control herself.

“Okay.” He sounds a little lost, but the way he’s rubbing her back feels practiced. Clarke normally hates to be touched when she’s crying-- it only makes her cry harder-- but she can’t stop herself anyway, so she leans into it. Before she quite knows it, he’s got an arm around her and half her face is pressed into his chest. It’s a nice chest, and she’s getting it all wet. And probably snotty.

If this is what scares him off, she really won’t blame him.

“Eat as much pizza as you want,” he murmurs. “Who am I to tell you not to, anyway? Just some jackass who forgot that doctors are people too.”

Her laugh is watery, sounding more like a hiccup.

“You’re right though. I should be eating healthy. I should be able to go to the gym on my days off, to talk to my mom on the phone for longer than five minutes, to get by on as few as eight hours of sleep. Hell, I should be the one cleaning my own apartment.” She breathes in sharply through her nose, letting it out in a shaky exhale.

“But I can’t.” Another rattling breath. She doesn’t like the whiny quality to her voice, but the words won’t stop now that they’ve started. “I don’t even-- So many people have it harder than I do, you know? _I’ve_ had it harder. Med school was no cake walk, and I’ve had really horrible breakups in the past, and my dad dying… none of that made me feel this way. I _shouldn’t_ be feeling this way.”

The crying starts anew and Bellamy tightens his hold.

It’s strange, to break down in her kitchen in the arms of someone she barely knows. Strange that she can admit to him what she can’t admit to the people she holds dear.

Then again, maybe it’s not so strange.

Bellamy has no expectations of who she ought to be. She has nothing to lose by letting him see her at her most vulnerable. At her lowest. Even if he were to call her a freak and hightail it out of her apartment, never to return, she doesn’t think she could feel a whole lot worse at this moment.

At some point, she’s not sure how or when, she ends up in her bed, alone, under the covers. The thought of dealing with her crazy on her own is exhausting. She tells herself that she’s being too dramatic, that if she could just get over herself, she’d be fine. Instead, she clutches her pillow pet tighter and shuts her eyes, slipping into the blissful escape of sleep.

When she wakes, her apartment smells heavenly. She maybe should be worried, since she thought she was alone, but she can’t quite work herself up to it. If someone broke in, only to stop and cook in her kitchen, they can’t be all that malicious, right?

And then, of course, it’s Bellamy standing at her stove, prodding at something with a spatula. He looks up when she shuffles in and offers her a small smile she tries to return.

“Hey.” His voice is so gentle she almost wants to cry again, but her head is pounding and her eyes feel swollen, so she tamps it down. “How are you feeling?”

“Awkward.” She picks at a sticky spot on the counter, sliding back onto her stool. “I figured I scared you off.”

“I told you, messes don’t scare me,” he teases lightly, sliding her a glass of water. She drains it and sets it back down, and he immediately whisks it away to refill it. “I did leave, but only because I needed ingredients.”

“You’re telling me you can’t make a meal out of old pizza, cereal, and beer? I’m pretty sure I saw that on an episode of _Chopped_ once, if you need ideas.”

Bellamy smirks, but not in a way that makes her think he’ll accept her deflection. And, honestly, she probably owes him some sort of honest explanation.

“They also had a kitchen full of other ingredients they could incorporate,” he points out. “And my culinary skills are not quite that impressive anyway. I can, however, cook eggs, so omelets it is.”

“You didn’t have to do that.”

“You’re my friend,” he says, the gruffness of his tone at odds with his words. “And I’m not letting you pay me. For cooking or groceries.”

“Fine by me,” she shrugs. At his look of surprise, she adds, “I don’t actually make that much. I’ll accept free food if my _friend_ is offering it.”

He cocks his head thoughtfully.

“Then let’s revisit my salary next time I’m on the clock. For now… How long has this been going on, Clarke?”

She sighs and drains another glass. The water is doing wonders for her headache.

“A few months.”

“Have you talked to anybody about it?”

Her eyes drop to her hands. She can’t keep them on his face, not when he’s so incredibly sincere in his worry. It’s too much.

“No.”

He slides a plate of food into her view, places a fork in her hand and squeezes gently.

“It’s okay, Clarke.”

“It’s not. I’m not.”

“I know, but-- you don’t have to be. It’s like-- quicksand. The more you struggle, the deeper it sucks you in. The more you don’t talk about it, the harder it is to talk about. I get it.”

Her eyes flicker back up to his face, and he presses his lips together in the suggestion of a smile, then nods to her plate.

“Eat up.”

She does-- not because he told her to, but because she’s suddenly ravenous. It tastes as great as it smells.

“How do you know what it’s like?” She asks between bites. He’s starting another omelet, hopefully for himself.

“Did Raven tell you what I do?”

“I kind of figured you made a living out of ‘doing weird shit for money,’ but I guess that’s a little unrealistic.”

He laughs, adding spices she definitely didn’t own before.

“Random medical studies and getting my friends to bet me I won’t eat something gross doesn’t really pay the bills, no. I’m a social worker. I studied psych in undergrad.”

“That fits,” she decides. He turns and gives her a skeptical look.

“Yeah?”

“Messes don’t scare you off,” she reminds him, and he grins.

“Yeah. And trust me, this isn’t even that messy.”

“It’s messy for me,” she says quietly.

“I believe that.”

A companionable silence falls as Bellamy cooks and Clarke eats. She feels better. Not healed. Not cured. Not like she could go run 5K, but lighter. She had forgotten that sharing her burden with someone else didn’t saddle them with all the weight. She isn’t Atlas, handing off the full weight of the world for someone else to collapse beneath. She’s just a person.

When he finishes cooking, he leans on the counter across from her as he eats. It showcases his excellent forearms, which really did not need more of a spotlight (though Clarke isn’t complaining), and at this distance she can make out the splatter of his freckles.

“Can I ask you something?” He says, clearly not on the same page as she is.

“Can I stop you?”

“Probably not,” he grins. “What would you say if you were treating someone with diabetes, who told you they weren’t seeing a primary care physician because they think they should be healthy?”

Clarke tries not to smile, but it’s hard. His tone is so innocent, like this isn’t an obviously leading question. Like if he makes the right face, she won’t see where he’s leading her.

“I would probably tell them that it’s not about what they think they _should_ be, but what they _are_ that matters. And that everyone’s body is dependent upon insulin to function normally, whether or not their bodies regulate it correctly.”

He nods, overly serious, and her lips twitch again.

“You see where I’m going with this.”

“Hmm, no, I don’t think I do. Where are you going with this?”

“I think you need to see someone,” he says, switching to serious so fast Clarke almost can’t keep up. “I have recommendations I can make. And if you need me to, I can call them and set up the appointment.”

She swallows. “I don’t want to need it.”

His brown eyes are so warm and imploring she can’t make herself break his gaze.

“Admitting you need help doesn’t make you weak, Clarke. If anything, it makes you brave.”

She doesn’t feel brave. In the moments when she feels much of anything, she mostly feels like a fraud. Like a failure. But she’s been listening to the disparaging voice in her head for so long, she forgot it could lie to her. Hearing it articulated as she wept, hearing it contradicted by someone whose tone leaves no room for disbelief, is like opening a window and realizing how stale the air inside has become.

Words are too tricky-- finding the right ones, giving them voice-- so she just nods, and he nods back.

“You know what else would make you feel better?”

“Meds?”

“Maybe,” he grants. “But I was thinking more along the lines of fresh air. Sunshine. Exercise. We can be gym buddies.”

“Gym buddies?”

He shrugs. “Why not? I’ve got a membership near here, and I’ll actually hold you to showing up when you say you will.” His friendly expression morphs into a cocky smirk. “Unless you’re worried you can’t keep up.”

She rolls her eyes and snags a piece of ham he’s been saving for last, popping it in her mouth with a small smile even as he gapes, affronted.

“As long as you’re sure you don’t mind me holding you back. You do look like you have a pretty intense regimen.”

He smirks.

“Is that so?”

“Shut up.” She rolls her eyes. “You know what you look like.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t realize _you_ knew.”

She doesn’t blush. She refuses.

“I’m depressed, not blind, Bellamy.”

“Fair enough,” he laughs.

They work out a couple of times each week when their free time overlaps and then Bellamy helps her make an appointment with a friend of his who is an LPC-- by which she means, he stands there and washes the dishes and listens in as she makes the call herself. She’s too proud to let him do more than that, but she might have put it off indefinitely if he hadn’t been standing right next to her.

By the time he gathers his things to leave, it’s well after dark.

“You going to be okay?” He asks, lingering in the doorway and sliding his arms back into his hoodie. It looks soft, and Clarke has the odd impulse to nuzzle into it, which she is thankfully able to repress. Instead, she shrugs one shoulder.

“Doesn’t feel like it.”

“I meant tonight, not ever,” he smiles. “You’re going to be fine, Clarke.”

She nods. “I guess we’ll see.”

He shakes his head and pulls her into a tight hug. The material _is_ soft against her chin, his skin warm, his hands sure on her back. Raven would have given her this physical affection if she’d asked for it. Wells would have gotten on a plane, no questions asked, if she told him she needed him. But it’s been to hard to ask, and here Bellamy is offering. It’s no small thing.

“Thanks,” she tells him, voice muffled in his skin, hoping he’ll understand.

“Anytime.”

* * *

Going to the gym with Bellamy turns into gym and dinner after, turns into cool-down walks in the park across the street (“Fall weather is the best weather, Clarke. We have to take advantage of it while it’s here. It won’t last forever; winter is coming.” “Whatever you say, Jon Snow.”), turns into setting up a night they can watch documentaries together (“I could maybe get Raven to watch _Cosmos_ with me, but she’s not great at sitting still for long periods of time.” “Tell me about it. All of my friends are nerds, but not, like, documentary nerds.”), turns into a lot of quality one-on-one time Clarke wasn’t anticipating.

At first she was wary, sure that he’d see past his pity and be just as disgusted with her as she is with herself. Or she was certain he was hovering, not trusting her with her own care. And then, when he kept being wonderful, she was afraid he was becoming a crutch. That if he ever left her life, she’d fall right back into the pit.

But she’s doing a lot better now that she’s got a prescription. Healing is still a process, and she has good and bad days. At first they felt like they weren’t doing anything, but as time went on, she looked back and realized she’d been functioning better, that difficult tasks became easy and mindless like they used to be.

So she stops worrying about Bellamy being part of her therapy and just enjoys his friendship. She genuinely likes spending time with him, likes making him laugh, likes his enthusiastic, albeit sometimes snarky, commentary as David McCullough’s soothing voice fills her apartment.

She likes him a lot, and she isn’t sure what exactly she did that made him decide she was worth all this trouble-- from time to time, it feels like she somehow tricked him into it-- but she hopes she never stops doing it. Because she wants to keep him, if she can.

Of course, he’s not the only friend she has. Eventually, she’s able to tell Wells and her mom how she’s really been doing, and is only barely able to talk them out of visiting. 

Raven tells her she understands, that she went through the same thing in the wake of her accident. They set up a time to do laundry together-- a chore Clarke never felt comfortable letting Bellamy take on, and therefore, one that rarely got done.

It’s at the laundromat, mid-cycle, that Raven broaches the subject.

“So what’s up with you and Bellamy?”

Clarke pauses, a spoonful of frozen yogurt halfway to her lips.

“What?”

“You guys are spending all this time together.”

“You and I spend time together and it doesn’t necessarily mean anything,” Clarke points out. “Boom. Bisexual-ed.”

“I mean-- You barely knew him, but you talked to him before you talked to any of the rest of us.” Raven digs at her own froyo until she unearths a strawberry. She’s concentrating intently, and Clarke can’t get a read on her.

“Are you… upset? That I didn’t talk to you first?”

Raven rolls her eyes and kicks Clarke under the table.

“No, dummy. I’m trying to figure out-- is he your sponsor? Is he big-brothering you? Are you guys hooking up? Explain. Scientific minds need to know.”

“Sure, it’s for science,” Clarke teases, only avoiding the question a little. “Not for gossip at all.” Raven gives her a look and waits her out, and Clarke, predictably, cracks. “I don’t know. It’s not like I planned to have my mental breakdown when he was around, it just… happened. And he was there. And he never stopped being there.”

“You like him,” Raven accuses, jabbing her spoon in Clarke’s direction to emphasize her point.

“So what if I do?” Clarke juts her chin out. “I’ll admit it. He’s a good guy.”

“And hot.”

“Way hot,” she sighs. Like it’s some burden.

“Then why aren’t you hitting that?”

Clarke chews on her lip. “It feels shitty to say it doesn’t feel like he’s getting anything out of it, but-- he could be with someone who isn’t a basket case, you know?”

Raven considers this, surveying Clarke like she’s mentally taking her apart and putting her back together.

“You’re friends, right? Do you trust him to be honest if he doesn’t want to date you?”

“I do.”

As much as Bellamy gives of himself to help other people, he wouldn’t date her out of pity, or for fear that rejection would break her. They both know she’s in a better place than that.

“Then it couldn’t hurt to ask, right?”

“It could hurt.”

“Yeah, but like you said, he’s a good guy. He’d let you down easy. If he lets you down at all” She smirks. “And I can authoritatively say, as far as _rewards_ go, it’s worth the risk.”

Clarke shoots her a crude gesture and Raven cackles.

“Really, though,” she adds, nudging Clarke’s foot with hers. “You’re not a basket case. You’re a person. He’d be lucky to have you.”

“Thanks.” They smile softly at each other for a moment. “Is this where we hug?” Clarke asks, breaking out into a full-fledged smirk. “Really cinch the sentimental moment?”

Raven snorts. “In your dreams, Griffin.”

* * *

Clarke can’t get Raven’s voice out of her head that night, when Bellamy comes over with ingredients for homemade pizza (“I’m just trying to prove I’m better than you in every way, Clarke”) and stays to watch Ken Burns’s _Civil War_.

Not what she said about _rewards_ , though it’s been a good while since Clarke had any of those. 

But the real rewards of having Bellamy-- getting to kiss him to shut him up when they’re arguing about the suitability of pineapple as a pizza topping, getting to tuck herself under his arm as they cue the episode up, getting to tell him how grateful she is for him without fear that she’ll scare him off.

“What do you think my chances are of becoming a documentary narrator?” He asks between bites.

“It’s good to have dreams. Maybe don’t put ‘does weird shit for money’ on your resume.”

“I really haven’t done that much weird shit. You eat one habanero lime smoothie, and you’re branded for life,” he grumbles.

“Maybe if you sent in an audio resume,” she muses. “You’ve got a great voice.”

This catches his attention.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” There’s such fondness in his eyes, it pushes her forward. “Also great hair. And good facial structure. But those aren’t as necessary for voiceover narration. Maybe if you were like, the Bill Nye of history. I could see you being good at that job.”

He blinks at her, a smile spreading slowly across his face.

“You think I have good hair?”

“The best hair.” She reaches out and combs her fingers through it, her stomach fluttering when he leans into her fingers. “It’s so soft. People work really hard to get hair this ‘artfully messy,’ you know.”

He twirls a lock of hers around his finger, the back of his hand resting against her shoulder and making her breath catch.

“Your hair is pretty great too.”

She grins.

“What about my facial structure, Bellamy?”

He rolls his eyes, looking not at all annoyed.

“I was getting there--”

But he never gets the chance. Clarke slips her hand further into his curls and pulls him forward, everything inside her lighting up when he moves to close the distance between them. His lips are soft and firm, sliding against hers like he’s imagined this. Like he’s thought before about what he would do, how it would be.

She wants to deepen it, to lose herself in it, but Bellamy keeps it light until she draws back to give him a questioning look.

“You don’t owe me anything,” he tells her, his thumb tracing her jaw like he doesn’t know how to stop.

“You don’t owe me anything either,” she responds. His brow furrows, trying to unwind her logic. “You could be with somebody who isn’t this much of a wreck.”

He frowns harder.

“Everyone has issues, Clarke. You’re more than your depression, and I happen to like who you are.”

She has to laugh at the way the lightness of his words is so juxtaposed with the darkness of his expression. She brushes her fingers over his brow, smoothing out the wrinkles.

“I know,” she tells him, leaning in for another kiss. It’s meant to be brief, but he doesn’t hold back as much this time. “I forget sometimes. I'm kind of taking it one day at a time.”

“How’s today shaping up?”

She grins against his mouth, then gasps as his lips find a spot behind her ear.

“It looks like it’s going to end well.”

“You don’t think that’s a bit premature?” He teases. 

She shakes her head, dislodging him enough that she can get his lips back on hers, sweet and happy.

“I feel pretty good about it.” 

**Author's Note:**

> This is drawn largely from my own experiences. I don't have a Bellamy (lol i WISH) but I have great friends who are supportive. If you're going through something similar and you don't have anyone to talk to about it, feel free to talk to me on [tumblr](http://katchyalater.tumblr.com).


End file.
